I think it's more likely Lenovo will release tablets in the U.S. before it gets into the smartphone market in this country. Lenovo would face an uphill battle trying to compete against more established companies phone makers like Samsung and Apple, but is itself well established making Windows-based laptops. The upcoming launch of a version of Windows designed for tablets gives companies like Lenovo an "in".

I thought I saw something that certain PC manufacturers like Lenovo and Acer were thinking about getting into the US smartphone market when Windows Phone 8 Apollo dropped? Breaking into Android is pretty hard at this point--Samsung is very well entrenched, and just about anyone besides Samsung and HTC is lagging far, far behind. But Windows Phone is still anyone's game. HTC's efforts are pretty halfhearted compared to their One lineup, and Nokia only sells phones on two US carriers (and only one model per carrier).

But you're right, it could just be tablets. I imagine Lenovo is working on both an ARM ideapad Win 8 tablet for consumers and an x86 ThinkPad tablet to compete with the HP Slate 8.